


Systematic Error

by A_simple_lee



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Lab Partners, Lee!Reader, Platonic Relationships, Tickling, ler!bruce banner, tickle fight, ticklish!Reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21889399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_simple_lee/pseuds/A_simple_lee
Summary: Getting a lee mood in the middle of conducting research is definitely not convenient, but you plan a way to make it work. It does, just not how you were expecting.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Reader
Kudos: 22





	Systematic Error

You’re not sure why you’ve decided to sneak up behind Bruce - well, that’s not true, actually. You’re fully aware that you’re in a massive ‘lee mood right now, and are weighing up the odds of Banner t-wording you if you pester him. Tony seems to accomplish it easily enough, anyway; on a regular basis, too… You pause in your musings, fingers drumming against the lab bench. It occurs to you that you may not be the only touch-starved scientist in the labs.

The centrifuge beeps almost angrily, loud enough to interrupt your train of thought. You remove the samples, and add drops of indicator to a couple, before placing the next rack of samples inside a water bath and setting a timer for half an hour. It only takes a few more minutes to jot down your observations, and you find yourself left to wait for the next round of samples.

You glance to your left; Banner’s hunched over his lab stool, adjusting the coarse focus on his microscope. The pair of you talked for the first few hours, then settled into comfortable silence a while ago. Now or never, you suppose. Your glass of water’s empty, anyway - a good excuse to be getting up. You realize you’re overthinking this way too much. Getting up and striding alongside the bench, you reach out and poke Bruce’s side as you pass. He flinches.

“I’m getting water. You alright? Need anything?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” Banner doesn’t look up. Darn. He does start readjusting the fine focus, though, and you feel a little guilty for jogging him. 

“Okay.” A temptation to toe the line encroaches, and you succumb to it - trying not to let your heart jump into your mouth, you pinch his side gently as you turn away, and keep walking. It’s difficult not to look behind you to see if he reacted, but as you push open the glass door on your way out, you catch him looking at you with confusion in the reflection. 

You proceed to take twenty minutes ‘getting water’ - which mostly consists of you filling a cup, pouring it out, crumbling against the kitchen counter in an attempt to compose yourself, and refilling the cup, before repeating the process. It’s only once you remember you have 10 minutes left on the water bath samples that you feel ready to head back down, all the while lamenting the fact that Tony makes irritating people look so easy. 

Fortunately, Banner says nothing as you enter the lab again, now finished looking at samples and instead drawing up diagrams. 

“Hey, how’s it coming along?” You put down a glass of water for him and put your hand on his shoulder, brushing his neck in the process but pretending you’re none the wiser. Your lab partner twitches and puts his pencil down.

“Good. I- the number of cells in anaphase is higher than the other samples, we might have to disregard this one in calculations.”

“Huh. Odd.” You say, pretending to listen whilst trying not to walk out for another twenty minute water break. 

“Yeah. How are the other batches doing?”

“Two are finished, one’s still in the water bath for-” You pause to look at your watch. “-9 minutes.”

“Okay. I might take a break, then.”

“Me too.” You pull your stool over, and sit opposite Bruce as he moves to a clear space on the desk, pausing to check his phone. 

“Are you feeling alright today?” He asks.

“Yep, yeah. Why?”

“I dunno, you seem kinda antsy.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He definitely doesn’t believe you, but lets the subject drop. 

“Uh- what about you? Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah! The tests are really interesting, I’m looking forward to finishing them.”

“Same. I should check to make sure they’re not boiling over…” You nod towards the water bath, managing to throw in a quick prod to Bruce’s ribs on your way over. The samples are doing fine; they’ve changed colour slightly compared to before, but if anything look like they could do with a bit longer in the water. 

“Did Tony tell you to tickle me in his absence or something?”

You almost drop the test tube rack you’re getting out.

“Sorry- what?”

“You keep tickling me. Why?” This shouldn’t be a surprise to you at all - this acknowledgment of the situation is what you’ve been waiting for, but suddenly you’re praying for the floor to open up. You stay facing the bench, refusing to look at Bruce.

“Just bored, I guess.”

“You sound like Tony right now.”

“I do?” Your equipment’s set up, so you can’t really do much else except for return to your stool opposite.

“Yeah. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were asking for attention.” Banner smiles slightly as he says it, and you instantly wish you’d stayed at the bench.

“Pfft,” You start, but find yourself scrambling for words. “I can assure you, I’m not Tony.”

“Good to know.” He grins, shifting his stool to get back to work. You let out a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding. 

“…But if you do it again, I’m gonna have to assume that you are.”

“Meaning…?”

Bruce says nothing, but you catch his fingers wiggling as he reaches for a pencil fully in your view.

Your timer goes off, and you rush to unplug the water bath, jotting down the presence and colour of any emulsions. 

“Okay, that’s done.” You mutter, gathering up your notes and carrying them over to Banner.

“Good. Thanks.” 

“Nothing too out of the ordinary. Most of these are in line with the hypothesis.” As you speak, your hand reaches out to nudge his ribs. 

You feel Bruce grab your wrist before you can reach him. Shit.

“Uh-” 

Banner stands up, still holding your wrist. “Oh no you don’t.” 

You’ve left your lab coat unbuttoned - almost definitely on purpose - and your friend quickly takes advantage of this, snaking his hands under it to wrap them around your sides, fingers latching onto your abdomen before repeatedly squeezing over and over. Laughter swiftly takes over your frame, and you don’t have a chance to move before he backs you against the lab bench. It’s exactly what you were hoping for, but also ten times more embarrassing than you’d expected.

“Bruce-wahahahait!” Your hands find his wrists, and it takes every bit of your resolve not to push them away. Suppressing your impulses to squirm becomes increasingly difficult, so you settle for sinking down a little against the bench, letting go of Bruce’s wrists momentarily to flail your arms out in an attempt to catch yourself.

“Careful, don’t knock over my equipment!” He tuts, darting one hand under your arm - you shoot your hand down to protect yourself, resulting in you slipping clumsily downwards, and his fingers becoming trapped next to your torso. Your attacker follows you down for a bit, before catching you, keeping you cornered between him and the work space as your legs grow weak from laughing too hard.

“Ahahahaha, nohohoho!” You’re sort of propped up against Banner now, trying both to override your reflexes and escape the fingers spidering over your skin - you lift your arm up in the hope that he’ll shift his focus away, but Bruce instead takes it as an invitation to tickle you more, speeding up and digging his thumb gently into the sensitive spot; your arm comes crashing back down, and another wave of hysterics hits as his other hand counts your ribs.

“Any particular reason you felt like being a pain in the ass today?” He starts conversationally, at long last moving his trapped hand to claw at your stomach.

“Nahaha- I told you alreaheheady! I was bohohored!”

“Really? That old excuse? Think of one I haven’t heard from Stark twenty times already, and get back to me.”

“Nohoho!”

“No? What, you want me to guess? Okay, I think you wanted me to tickle you. Because you wanted attention, or- I don’t know, you’re touch starved. Which is fine. But you could’ve asked instead of trying to annoy me.” Bruce starts, slowing down the tickling slightly so he’s audible over your giggling. You’ve never felt a blush run up your neck so fast before.

“Lies!” You cry, trying not to sound as if Banner hasn’t just completely called you out and considering that it should’ve occurred to you that multiple PhDs make somebody observant as well as intelligent.

“Are you sure? Because you’ve been trying not to push me away for a while now.”

“I- shuhuhut up!” It’s the most you can muster with your growing embarrassment, but it seems to act as proof of theory for him. 

“So I’m right?” He steps away, leaving you to regain a small amount of your composure with a smile. 

“You don’t need to be so insistent, but yeah.” You mumble, doing up your lab coat and standing next to him.

“Sorry?”

“…I said yes. You’re right. Maybe.”

“Okay.” He nods. “So I have two attention-seeking geniuses to work with. That’s fine.”

“…It is?”

“Yeah. Just ask instead of tickling me next time, okay?”

“No promises.” You grin, striding away to your work as Banner sighs. Your days in the lab have just gotten even better.


End file.
